


maid of golden hair (sunshine came along with thee)

by brophigenia



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Eyebrows, F/M, Found Family, Good Parent Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Good Parent Jaskier | Dandelion, Good Parent Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Hair Braiding, Hair Washing, M/M, Post Season/Series 01, Post-Canon, Slice of Life, at home with your dad and other dad and wine aunt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:47:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27731017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brophigenia/pseuds/brophigenia
Summary: “Can you show me to do my hair like a lady?” Cirilla asked.(AKA, the Blunders Three have raised Ciri to the age of fifteen, and while she can wield a sword and strike down people with her magical powers, she's not much use with a hairbrush. Jaskier, luckily, can help.)
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 9
Kudos: 246





	maid of golden hair (sunshine came along with thee)

**Author's Note:**

> I just love all of these disasters, okay?

_ i’m a young one  _

_ stuck in the thoughts of an old one’s head.  _

_ *** _

Jaskier is as fastidious with his appearance as any woman that Ciri has ever known. 

Her grandmother was never much one for primping— at least, not where Cirilla could see. Calanthe had been a beacon of a woman, a lioness in a queen’s skin, and Ciri had never seen her in anything less than her best. 

(Sometimes that best had been in full regalia, crown upon her head. Sometimes it had been armored and blood spattered, but victorious. Calanthe wore everything as if it were a badge of honor.) 

She’d been a child, at court, with her maidservants only concerned with keeping her clean and neat, not  _ done up.  _ She’d been a child, not an eligible maiden, and her appearance had reflected that fact. 

In the few paintings she’d seen, Pavetta had been a carefully-coiffed princess, young and fresh-faced, arrayed in gold jewelry like sunbeams, painted  _ so  _ carefully by whatever master had been commissioned. Every detail was exquisite, but Ciri had never felt closer to her mother when gazing upon her ever-frozen visage. If anything, she was reminded of the fact that she  _ didn’t  _ know the woman, that her only knowledge of Pavetta came from second- and third-hand tellings of a beautiful, dutiful girl who had married a young knight and been killed in a terrible accident. 

Yennefer was like Calanthe— always turned out, always gorgeous, always appearing through shimmering portals wearing elaborate outfits and jewels. The most beautiful woman in all the world, probably, with her amethyst eyes and obsidian locks. Geralt certainly thought so— he was utterly besotted by her, even though compliments on her appearance always made Yennefer’s lovely eyes go faraway and her smile turn sharp. 

Geralt— well. Her guardian was a handsome man, of course, but he was not exactly…  _ well-kempt.  _ Geralt could frankly care less about the state of his hair, as long as it didn’t fall into his eyes and interfere with his vision during a fight. He usually smelled strongly of sweat, horseflesh, and the oil he used on his swords. His hugs were the most comforting things in her life, but Ciri had no illusions about the cleanliness of the  _ deliverer _ of said embraces.

(In fact, the only times she’d ever seen Geralt truly clean and fresh, not just scrubbed down briskly in a cold river, had been at Kaer Morhen when Jaskier had taken him down to the hot springs with a whole caddy full of concoctions. Those nights, Geralt’s freshly-oiled and -combed hair would gleam like mithril in the light from the keep’s Great Hall. He was almost too beautiful to be viewed head-on, like a king or a knight from a storybook. Jaskier’s songs on those nights were syrupy ballads of old, sometimes in languages Ciri didn’t know.) 

Ciri was training in the ways of the Wolf, was studying magic and her strange, frightening abilities with Yennefer, but she was still a princess, a girl, a  _ young lady.  _ There were things that, after a life filled with oft-taken-for-granted luxury, she craved if only for the nostalgic pleasure they brought. The calmness that erupted just from touching the fabric of one of Yennefer’s fine gowns, silk and velvet and fur reminding her of  _ home.  _ Of  _ Cintra.  _

(Of her  _ family,  _ dead and buried for what felt like an eternity, now.) 

She was a woman, if only in technicality, and a warrior. Fifteen and green around the gills, but not _unaware._ They went through towns and passed travelers on the roads, took coin for the head of whatever monster was tormenting the latest hamlet, and they saw beautiful people on their journeys. Ciri felt _something_ when she saw beautiful girls with perfectly-arranged hair, graceful gaits, skirts that seemed to swirl _just_ _so_ around their legs as they moved. When she saw handsome young men with neatly-styled facial hair, pomaded locks, pressed doublets that matched their cloaks. 

(She wasn’t sure if it was jealousy or attraction, at first— still wasn’t entirely quite decided on that, but thought maybe  _ both.)  _

If Geralt was to teach her to wield a sword and Yennefer was to teach her how to use her powers, then why couldn’t Jaskier be her tutor in the more  _ courtly  _ arts? 

The first time she asked, he sputtered a bit on his half-cold tea, sitting on a stump near the dying campfire. It was morning, and he’d have had  _ hot  _ tea if he’d not gone off to find some herb or another that he used in the balm that he smoothed over his lips to keep them  _ silky as the sheets of my sweet Countess de Stalberg,  _ or so he had explained loftily to Geralt once. 

It was just the two of them, Geralt and Yennefer having gone into the woods in the opposite direction so that they could fuck. They’d said something about scouting, but Ciri knew it was only for her benefit. They both liked to pretend her mostly ignorant of such things, though they’d all three given her a frankly-scarring talk about the relations between men, women, and others the week after she’d begun her monthly bleeding. 

“Can you show me to do my hair like a lady?” She asked again, patiently, when it appeared Jaskier would do no more than gape at her, unsure. Unsure but  _ eager,  _ and after another second he sprung into action, pulling out his prized silver-backed hairbrush and a variety of bottles and tins from his pack. 

By the time Geralt and Yennefer returned, both looking unaffected despite the flush dying down on their cheeks, Ciri’s hair was braided along the crown of her head and soft with unscented oil that Jaskier had shown her how to work in from roots to ends with a massage-like motion that reminded her of the way her grandfather would stroke her hair when she was sick with fever as a very young child. 

Geralt stopped for a moment when he saw her, registering the change. “You look more like your mother each passing day.” He told her, quiet and gruff, before going on to start breaking camp in preparation of their continuing travels. 

Something warm and painful bloomed in her chest at his words. She held tight to the feeling, tucked it away beneath her ribs. Yennefer had told her once not to dwell on the powerless emotions— self-loathing and fear. In response, Ciri tried to commit each powerful feeling to memory in such exquisite detail that she could pull it out again whenever she needed. She was creating her own set of armor out of pride and sadness and love. 

(Nothing would hurt her, ever again.)

Next came the grooming of her brows, one evening at an inn while Geralt and Yennefer went to ‘check on Roach.’ It was not as if Geralt and Jaskier never went off together— it was only that Yennefer never looked the way Jaskier did, when she was the one left with Ciri while the men went off to fornicate. She was never lonely, nor bright-eyed with unshed tears of jealousy, or at least not over something trivial like Geralt and Jaskier’s continuing sexual escapades. 

“Your mother’s eyebrows were fairer,” Jaskier told her as he demonstrated how to use a piece of thread to pull out the unwanted hairs from the root, all in a burning sting of pain that made her wince and shiver at the same time. “Almost white. You have a bit more of your father’s coloring in you.” The words were musing, but Ciri clung to them greedily, arranging them in her mind the way she had since she was a girl, creating better pictures in her mind of her parents than she could gleam from dusty old paintings. 

She focused on the task at hand, swearing good-naturedly along with Jaskier as they sat side by side and threaded their own eyebrows, watching their reflections intently in the looking glass on the wall. 

After, their irritated skin pink and warm to the touch but impeccably groomed, Jaskier and Ciri lay on the floor before the fireplace in comfortable silence, broken only by the bard’s periodic bursts of quiet humming. 

Geralt and Yennefer returned eventually, the sorceress summoning up a low trundle bed for Ciri to sleep in while the three adults climbed into bed together, Geralt at the center. Jaskier pointedly did  _ not  _ curl around Geralt, though Yennefer draped a hand across his chest and leaned her forehead against his shoulder. 

In the morning, Ciri knew, she’d wake to find Jaskier wrapped around Geralt and Yennefer turned onto her side, fingers tangled in Jaskier’s dark hair, all three of them sleeping soundly. 

Sometimes Jaskier would break from their traveling group for weeks at a time, or months— in that time he’d go to Oxenfurt, and meet back up with them triumphantly with his pockets full of coin and presents in his pack for all three of his wayward traveling companions. For Yennefer there would be some magical trinket or rare herb, despite their one-sided rivalry over Geralt’s attention. Coming home made Jaskier generous, knowing that months of absence made Geralt more likely to lavish attention upon the bard, dragging him off for assignations. He’d give her these gifts and then press a courtly kiss to the very corner of her mouth, seductive as all the stories she’d ever half-heard about his conquests. 

Geralt would receive a new dagger, or belt, or something of the kind.  _ Something to remember me by, next time,  _ Jaskier would say, as if the pommel of Geralt’s sword was not wrapped in a leather cord woven with a lock of his hair. As if Geralt did not pine for him, in his silent way, whenever they were apart. 

After their  _ lessons _ began, Jaskier always brought some kind of little luxury for Ciri. A silver clasp for her cloak, a new set of titanium hairpins, a bottle of jasmine-scented oil for her ever-more-elaborate braids. In those moments she felt  _ seen,  _ grown-up, smiling at Jaskier and kissing his soft cheek in thanks. 

He was not Calanthe, none of them were, but they were teaching her things every day that her grandmother would never have. 

She’d have become a brilliant stateswoman beneath her grandmother’s tutelage. A formidable political opponent for anyone. But not a warrior, or a sorceress, or someone who knew the difference between silk and satin. 

These things were not  _ better.  _ This life, lived on the road with her three guardians, was not  _ better.  _

_ But, _ Ciri thought as she bedded down next to Yennefer and listened to the low, sweet tone of Jaskier singing to Geralt outside of the tent, adoration and love in each note,  _ it was not  _ worse, _ either.  _

Yennefer’s fingers stroked through her unbound hair, never finding a single tangle among the carefully-combed strands. Ciri fell asleep to the lullaby of the witch’s breath, Jaskier’s singing, and the chirruping of the crickets in the warm summertime night beyond the safety of their camp. 

***

_ help me make the most of freedom  _

_ and of pleasure.  _

**Author's Note:**

> follow me @ brophigenia.tumblr.com


End file.
